Van Tour Pt 1: Chaos Unbound
(or, a writer begins to yearn hopelessly for the forbidden dream: shelves)
VANLIFE: EXPECTATIONS
Wow. Look at that, right? Beautiful! This is what you see when you first start looking into living in a van. Not any mere ‘life spent in a van’, no- It gets its own term, it’s own hashtag: Vanlife. This kind of van is everywhere online: Pristine, calming, peaceful- who wouldn’t want to spend a year in that mobile paradise, traveling around the country, singing songs to happily clapping mountain folk on your (tastefully be-stickered) guitar?
Everything has its place, in that van. Little cubbies for all your stuff, magnetically locked so they’d never ever spill open on a turn and let something fall out. Tasteful, clean, modern decor. Look at that stove! Look at that spice rack! The warm, rich tones of expensive cedar. A 06’ Double-Oaked Chardonnay- that you bought at the winery- chilling in your perfectly cooled refrigerator that is powered by your perfectly engineered solar power setup.
Mmmm. #Vanlife.
And then… There’s me.
VANLIFE: REALITY (CAN GO FUCK ITSELF)
So… Hi! How are you? Doing good? Yeah? Good. Me too.
Well… Maybe not ‘good’. Can’t honestly say ‘good’. My shelves keep breaking, you see. They were so great for a few days, and then I took a turn too hard, and… WHUMP. All the stuff that had been so lovingly- possibly even meticulously- placed on them was now on the floor, and the shelves had sort of… crumpled. Yeah, yeah; ‘crumpled’ is a good word. The structural integrity of the shelves had come into serious question.
Now, it’s possible that the shelves had perhaps not been intended to hold quite as much stuff as I put on them; they were the cheapest Walmart shelves possible and quite literally made of paper and aluminum tubes so thin that they bend under the merest whisper of weight (or centrifugal force). And now they’re kind of all bent up, and don’t go totally straight anymore. Now, let’s be clear: they don’t collapse and pitch all my stuff onto the floor every time I take a turn! God, no. That would be intolerable. But, say… Every fourth turn? Fifth?
And look at that blue thing! I got a jug of water and a nifty little powered faucet that pokes on top of it; it’s great. I can refill it with water, use that water to make coffee and noodles, and I don’t have to keep buying extra-large bottles of Deer Park from the gas station. It’s awesome!
But- and some of you might know this already- water is kinda heavy. And while I quite confidently strapped that water bottle to side of the van with one entire bungee cord, apparently that was not quite enough to keep it in place while I was careening through the backroads of Upstate New York. So one of the times I looked into the back, hoping to be reassured by the now familiar sight of all my shit on the floor because my shelves had collapsed again, I instead saw all of my shit on the floor because my shelves had collapsed again- and soaking in about three fingers of water.
(‘Fingers’, if you don’t know, is an old-fashioned way to order scotch (One finger is a single, two a double, three a motherfuckin’ party) and about three fingers of scotch sounded pretty good right about then.)
One of the reasons I bought my particular model of beat-up old construction van (it’s not actually that beat-up or old, but being mean is how we show love in this family) is that if I was very careful with how I built the floor and ceiling, I would have juuuuuust enough room to stand fully upright in it. So it’s a tiny bit annoying- and I’m not complaining, mind you! But just a tiny bit annoying that the only place I have to store my construction materials is strapped over my head onto the ceiling. Where they keep occupying the same space that my aforementioned head would like to be, usually with a small bruise and some quite colorful language.
Now, a newcomer to this blog (real-time memoir? tiresome list of grievances? the mostly-true leadup to the tragic Utah Vanpocalypse of 2026?) might wonder a couple things:
Why in the fuck don’t you put that stuff under the bed (the ‘garage’) where it belongs?
There is no way there’s more than thirty dollars worth of construction materials there, right? You cannot possibly be that broke or cheap. Why don’t you throw it away?
Well, smartypants, as previously discussed I’ve found that disposing of trash on the road is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do in this life, and I tried to climb a ladder in a field once. And my ‘garage’ looks like this:
See that box with ‘HDMI’ on it? There’s a TV in there. Here’s a fun fact: It’s not even the tv that got rained on. It’s a tv that’s been sitting in my closet at home for three years that I never bothered to throw out, and brought with me because I figured I’d just pop by the closest dump and toss ‘er in. The actual bricked TV (my beloved OLED, sob, ect.) is sitting under the foam. The foam is the part of my bed that I hacked off in a Home Depot parking lot when I realized that I do not, in fact, need a whole queen-sized bed in my tiny van, and it was time for some Cronenbergian surgery.
The two boxes on the far right? C’mon. You know what’s in those boxes. Don’t make me say it.
That’s right. God damned roof vents.
Anyways, where were we? Oh, right. Van Tour!
So basically my daily routine is that I take all of the stuff that’s on the floor, desk, chair, and anywhere I need to be and put it on the bed (the horizontal gray thing). And then try to forget about it! Until nighttime, whereupon I take all of the stuff that’s on the bed and stick it various places (the shelves, when they feel like being shelf-like) and the desk, or the chair, or just anywhere but the floor.
Even though, let’s be honest: It’s all going to end up on the floor. But sanity is built of these little fictions, these lies we tell ourselves.
It’s not all bad! Do you see the cool little fan hanging from the ceiling, there? A new addition to the family and it makes sleeping in 110 degree heat about seven bajillion times better. And when I get really bored because my power has run out, I can kneel on the bed with the keyboard strapped to the wall and pretend I’m in the music video for ‘Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)’ by Journey. (If anybody in this audience gets that joke and can prove it, I will 100% buy you a shot the next time I see you.) And it’s super nice to lay on the bed and angle the TV towards you after a long day of writin’ and drivin’ and chill out with whatever Tom Hardy movie he’s mumbling through currently.
Oh! Also. You see those two stacks of wood strapped up to the walls on either side? With orange tape holding them together? Remember those! They will return to this story. They will triumphantly return to this story!
And, once all the shit that was on the bed is now safely in other places (until the morning, where it will return) I can get a little privacy and a little sleep. I brought some old blackout curtains with me from home, and screwed some little screws into the headboard, and when I want to go to sleep in a place where I’m not supposed to be sleeping, I hang up the little curtains and if I do it just right, nobody can see inside.
And then I can watch my Tom Hardy Mumble Movies in peace, if you know what I’m sayin’. I think you know what I’m sayin’. Riiiiiight?
He doesn’t talk clearly in his movies, is what I’m saying. Love the guy, but open your goddamn mouth Tom Hardy!
So one thing I’m not sure if I’ve talked much about is my power setup. As said previously, this adventure kind of hinges on me being able to work from the road, and working from the road hinges on this little box that says ‘Ecoflow’ on it being full of sweet, delicious electricity, and the little box that says ‘Ecoflow’ on it being full of sweet, delicious electricity hinges on the even littler box that says ‘Etaker’ on it doing its job properly, and without that little box, kids, my little adventure is over.
For those who are curious, it works like this: The van has an alternator that makes delicious electricity when the engine is running, and sends that sweet juice to the car battery, which stores it for stuff like lights and starting the engine and turn signals and whatnot. But the alternator makes way more electricity than the car needs, so I hooked up this expensive little gadget that says ‘Etaker’ to that alternator, and whenever the van is making more electricity than it needs, that little vampire sucks it up and sends it into the Ecoflow battery, which stores it up and makes it available for literally everything in my life on the road. Every bit of power I have comes from that battery- it’s super important! My roof vent, my computer, my TV, my phone, my everything.
And without that little Etaker unit, there is no way to get electricity into that battery other than running a very long extension cord across a grassy field and plugging it into a city park pavilion and hoping no cops mosey on by and ask you 1) if you live nearby and 2) what in the holy hell are you doing, you filthy vagrant power thief, ect.
That Etaker unit is supremely important, is what I’m saying. This whole adventure doesn’t happen without it. I would be totally screwed if anything happened to that thing. It would not be hyperbole to say that, next to the van engine itself, that little box is the most important thing in this van.
(Hee hee, remember this? I told you about this. It’s called FORESHADOWING. But that’s a story for another day!)
(So… Let’s take a little break, shall we? I can tell you’re getting a wee bit nervous. Maybe even glancing at your phone, getting ready to send me a ‘U ok?’ text. This all looks pretty bad, right? Unsustainable, even. But I’ll save you some stress and give away the ending: Buttercup does not get eaten by the screeching eels. And I am totally hamming up the shitty/uncomfortable/ridiculous aspects of the ‘before’ phase of the Van Tour because I like to think I’m a storyteller, and it’ll make a better reveal when I show you what the van looks like now. There’s a happy ending coming! And never for a moment forget that I had SO MANY good times in and around this chaos. But it will be more fun if we tour through the slums before we climb up onto the sunny hill.)
Anyways, onwards and upwards; let’s go look at the front of this dang thing. Not much more to see back in the living area; you get the idea. Shit hanging from the walls, shit falling off the walls, general chaos, yadda yadda. We signed up for an adventure, right? Cold, rainy nights, no second breakfast, Mordor, ect.
Anyways, next to me while I’m driving is my trusty box of tools. I’d like to say there was even one day of that first month when I didn’t need to open that box, but I genuinely don’t think there was. I’m proud of that box. I got it at Harbor Freight, which is a place that manly men shop at! And someday, if I am very responsible and brave and work very hard, I might figure out a way to put all my tools into it in such a manner that I’ll be able to close it.
These are the dreams that sustain me, through the long dark nights of listening to weird birds have sex outside my van.
Also pictured is my milk-crate of assorted cables, wires, small electronic devices, remotes that don’t have working TV’s anymore, a printer cable for some goddamn reason, about twelve HDMI cables even though I only need one, and every single USB cable I have ever touched in my entire life. I’m the furthest thing from a hoarder you could ever find- except for USB cables. It’s like I’m afraid I’ll finish my time on earth and meet the Spectre who will carry me across the black river to the Dark Lands, but he’ll need a Generation 2 micro-USB cable to charge up his boat. There’s a lot of dumb, useless cables in that milk crate, is what I’m saying.
Also, Milk Crates: If you can find someone who is living in a van that doesn’t have a milk crate somewhere in there filled with crap they don’t need, they’re not true #vanlife. They probably have a trust fund. They probably hired some company in Sweden to design the inside of their van. Posers. POSERS, I SAY!
Shut up. I’m not jealous. Well, maybe a little jealous. That spice rack is rad.
What were we talking about? Oh, right, I was showing you the van. In all it’s chaotic glory. My home for the last month (and a half, but the narrative conceit here is that we’re pretending that it’s just been a month. We’re pretending that I didn’t just spend two weeks working on the fucker). I was showing you my Home Sweet Home.
But… Maybe a little too chaotic of a home. It’s hard to get your head into a good writing space when stuff is falling on it. A significant portion of my day is spent moving shit from the floor to the bed and back again. I started to dream of… stability. I started to dream of… SHELVES. I started to dream of maybe- just once, just for fun- all of my shit NOT falling all over the floor and getting five gallons of water dumped on it. I started to wander through Home Depots and started making wistful little doodles on my hand, sketches of a better, finer life. Ideas… hopes. Dreams.
A dream of shelves. I knew I had to come back to Cleveland for a couple weeks for tooth stuff. I would have a little downtime before I could set back out on the road. I started to wonder if, maybe- just maybe- I could dust off some of my ancient Construction Skills handed down by my father and held in trust by my Construction Cousins(tm). I began to dream that maybe, if I was strong enough, and smart enough, and if I just believed hard enough, that I might be able to tame just a little bit of the chaos.
So, enough of the ‘before’ part of the tour, right? Let’s get onto the big reveal! Let’s see the… Wait, what’s that, Substack? I’m almost near the email limit? There’s no room to show you the upgrade? All this foreplay has been for nothing? This has been nothing but a giant tease?
Well, shoot. Guess I’ll see you in Part 2, then.
Cue evil laugh! (but not that evil, I’ll give you Part 2 in like, a day or two)
As always, thank you. I very absolutely and dramatically WOULD NOT have been able to keep this (hopefully) amusing series of disasters going without the support I’ve gotten; THANK YOU. I’ll be heading west soon, and we’ll get back to road stories, and maybe just a tiny bit less chaos. Also, got any questions about the clusterfuck shown above? Pop ‘em down below. I might even answer honestly.
"I can kneel on the bed with the keyboard strapped to the wall and pretend I’m in the music video for ‘Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)’ by Journey"
Do you put on your matching blazer and boots first, and tease your hair?
I started reading this and first thought: not a contractor after all, a...writer! Yup.
At the end, I thought: "sounds like a writer of trilogies to me!"